


The Ainulindalie and the Names and Natures of the Valar and of the Great Enemy and her servants

by TheLightdancer



Series: The War of the Jewels Against the Elder Queen of the Stars [1]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: AU-Alignment Swap, Beware the Infinite Starlight, Evil Varda stories need more love so I'm gonna do some, F/M, Light is not Good, Lovecraftian Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:07:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24928909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLightdancer/pseuds/TheLightdancer
Summary: Inspired by several really excellent takes on the idea of an evil Varda and by my own stories using the 'being made of starlight' as a motif of ultimate evil, I've decided on what starts out as a remake, so to speak, of elements of the legendarium where Varda, rather than Melkor, becomes the archetype of all evil. As an alternate history of Arda the butterflies start off small and end up Mothra-sized by the time of the War of Wrath. The inspirations are one snippet of an AU, this is going to see elements of the entire legendarium from the dawn of creation to the equivalent of the War of the Ring and its end.
Relationships: Elbereth Gilthoniel | Varda Elentári & Morgoth Bauglir | Melkor, Elbereth Gilthoniel | Varda Elentári/Manwë Súlimo, Vala | Valar/Vala | Valar
Series: The War of the Jewels Against the Elder Queen of the Stars [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1804138
Comments: 37
Kudos: 23





	1. Of the Music of the Ainur and the Fall of Varda Elentari, later Varda Morentari

_It is said of old that there is He who is called Eru, the Allfather, in Quenya Illuvatar._

_Those stories are distant and forgotten in the days of yore when he who was called Aelfwine of the Saxons encountered a being like a tree and a man together who told him the last of the stories of Earth's distant age. For long have we, the modern heirs of this ancient world dismissed these stories of warring gods, of the Hyborian age that succeeded it where the last of those called Istari in these tales reappeared as the Thoth-Amon slain by the distant and legendary Conan of Cimmeria. There are things that cannot be accounted for in the more traditional understandings of mythology and of science, artifacts of forgotten species, fossils that are not human nor close to human. Beings in the great city in the Hijaz identified with fabled Irem, the Valusia of the Hyborian age and a relic of the dawn-age's Great Enemy, the Star-Queen of the Palace of Eternal Night in the far north. Metals, rarely found, that obey no scientific laws, and in all of this, explanations for why mortals plead for clouded nights and why only the lost and the damned such as fabled Chinggiz Khagan of the Tartars have dwelt in the open in the gaze of the Stars and taken from them savagery and brutality without limit. Woe to those who gaze unhindered upon the starlight is a maxim of all cultures, and it is the maxim that has enabled scientists to reconstruct a tongue transliterated loosely from the old legends as Proto-Adunaic, the first tongue of all humanity._

_There have been many translations of the Red Book of Westmarch, the singular work of the pre-Hyborian Age, when the Star-Queen came from beyond the stars and brought her images with her. The greatest and the most famous of these was published in the seventies by a scholar of northern England, and its fantastic nature has brought in mind both stories emulating them and, in a case unparalleled for such a work of academia, new stories in turn, a new genre of fiction._

_There has been only two cases of translations to match the master's, one that served for four volumes of the fabled Al-Azif of he who is known as the Dark Prophet of fantastic Arabia, Abdul Hazred, who arose in the age of Muhammad and preached fantastic visions of the High King in the Halls Beyond Time, calling him the Soul and Messenger of greater gods. Hazred remains the singular figure known to have lived for some five centuries from the time of Muhammad, expiring with fright upon some strange event he mentioned occurred in the distant north, in the steppes of what would later become Tartaria, today known as Mongolia. And the other that commissioned by Khubilai Khan from fabled Leng, that realm that is in Dreaming and waking and where dwells therein a high priest not to be described, that wears a silken mask on its face and sits alone in a monastery dreaded even by the cold and cruel waking-dreams of Leng._

_This is not an expansion of the master's work, for few have matched his keenness in making the Elder Days live, in making them not fabled products of translations that were part of eras that have receded into distant memory. Rather, consider this work and what follows to be a translation suited to the era of the years of our Lord in the twenty-first century, in the wake of the discoveries that confirmed beyond all doubt that not only was fabled Conan a man among men, that Atlantis of Kull was Westernesse of Ar-Pharazon the Golden, self-proclaimed Master of Mankind by the Will of the Star-Kindler, but that the creatures called the Quendi, and their more malevolent counterparts, those primordial Unsidhe and Ljossalfar that are sources of fear and trembling the Eldar, too, were real. In the elder days, it is said, they were eternal, and it is said that in the wake of the Third Age that somehow they departed into the realm of the stars. What fearsome things await mankind should the first masters of this world seek to return and to kindle anew the glories of their vanished Queen?_

-An excerpt of _The Red Book of Westmarch, or the Downfall of the Lady of the Rings and the Return of the King, encompassing the Quenta Silmarillion and tales of the Second Age and those of the Great Wars and Deeds of our time,_ by Bilbo Baggins, arch-scholar of the vanished Holbtyla of Flores Island, translation by Neil Gaiman. 

In ancient times and elder days there was He who was called Allfather, that is Illuvatar, firstborn of all creation. By Him all things are made and in Him there is nothing that knows no authorship. When the night skies in their infinite expanses remind humanity and the elder races' spirits and that which remains of them to know fear and trembling if hallowed and to become things of avarice and armor that dye worlds in blood if glorying in their hell-light, it is worth the remembrance that she who kindled the great stars knows a superior and a master and a creator. The infinite Heavens that turn in an expanse that leaves all life feeling small and miniscule are but nothing before Him who came into the realms beyond. 

Of all that He created He created two entities, the first, the future Great King of all Arda and of the great Valar and Ainur, the second she who is known as Old Night. She who was then called the Lofty One. The Great King the Mighty-Arising was the first to know existence and in humility he knelt before his creator, Whom spoke to him of His plans and of His dreams, with a sorrow that Melkor could not grasp. Varda came into being next, and in the infinite darkness of the time before time when there was but the Halls of the Allfather where He sat upon a great throne and somehow there seemed to be seven great lights that were not lights and the droning of great flutes and the thunderclaps of what were but could not be drums. It was in pursuit of these sounds that she that became the dreadful Star-Kindler sought to explore the infinite abysses. What horrors she encountered there to transform her, none may say. It is of old rumor bequeathed from Maiar and what the Valar spoke to the Quendi that she sought the secret fire of her creator, and in finding it not became a being who grasped her future before it was writ, and in becoming the queen of the infinite stars that burn and light the heavens came to desire mastery of all that is or would ever be, and ever the foe and the threat to simple mortal life. 

_Varda, then the second of all that would come into being, loved the infinity of the Void. Loved it, loved that there were only two creations of her Father, herself and her elder brother, the Mighty-Arising. Splendid indeed was he, possessing powers she would never come to know and never cared in the least to know. She had wandered far, and in that wandering all that echoed was the constant whining drone of a flute and the thunderpeals of drum-beats, impossible and yet very real, and a sense of presence of....Something...pressing at the center of nuclear space that left her feeling for the first and for a very long time, only, time. Fear. With that she seemed to run though it was more that her spirit drove further from her father's will, wondering at the sheer infinite emptiness of it all._

_**Am I all that is, besides Belkoroz**?, she asked. _

_**No, you are not.** Two voices echoed, as something seemed to press through the course of things. It was immense, impossible to describe, like a great ram or spider or goat or ewe, a thing of countless warped angles around which reality deformed and but remade itself. It was beyond her, beyond anything in her Father's creation, and the recognition of this thought and the delightfulness of it surged into her, and for a moment in time the first shadows of the Star-Queen blazed when her thought formed eyes that glowed with the terrible starlight that was her due in times to come. _

_The twin voices continued to speak:_

_**You seek that which cannot be found, your Creator's power to create. None of you in this realm may do this, it is a power forbidden to you.** _

_**Why?** _

_**His the will and His the power to define it. He is that which is beyond and all this but a story He has told himself to see where it will and how it will. Those with absolute power may do with it what they will. Including lavishing enormous power on what is nothing more than a great fireside tale and children's story.** _

_**What is a fireside? What are children?** _

_**In time my dear all these words shall become apparent to you.** _

_**What are you?** _

_For a moment she caught but a glimpse of something immense, and the feeling of a kind of Hunger akin to the creature that had schismed off of the greater hulk that had so neatly brushed the world and in other realms drove Belkoroz to madness. This was not like that, it was Power, it was Domination. A great bloated creature on a gilded throne hewn like a skull, clad in brilliant armor with hair of brilliant gold, and eyes that gleamed with a terrible and horrid light. Her presence was something that made Varda gasp in awe and she felt a desire that surged through her the first time._

_**I will be like you, a Queen.** _

_The creature laughed, both voices in a curious harmony._

_**There are none like me in this realm. My kind peek through the infinite twists of time and space. I sought to see one of the most primordial realms at the dawn, one of the very first of many layers of the Dreamtime on the realm that binds another thing, a Dark Dreamer, who has sought to dare a God-Realm and Fallen. And so I have. Further back than I sought. I had expected another, a being of manifold gifts, one of beautiful chaos. You?** _

_**I will be like you, two-voiced one.** _

_**Nothing that exists is like me.** _

_**Mine the hands that heal,** _

_**Mine the hands that kill.** _

_**Mine the hands that stilled the wine-dark sea.** _

_**Mine the hands that set stars to burn,** _

_**that found the world of ashes and made it ivory and gold.** _

_**Next to all that, you are but a minor thing, a child newborn and lost in the infinite darkness and grasping that which your Creator's lies never meant for you to see. You and your realm are not alone, little creature.** _

_She saw the glowing thing with the wondrous-lit eyes smile, a smile too wide and fanged for a healthy creature but one that entranced Varda._

_**Yours not to hold the Flame Imperishable but you shall do wonders. Already, you have become distinct to your kind and you know it not.** _

_With that the other Presence withdrew and an aching sense of loneliness struck Varda and it dawned on her just how far she'd roamed from her Father's realm._

_With but a thought she returned, and was displeased._

Before there had been but two, herself and her brother. Now there were countless legions, the beings known as the Choir of the Ainur, who would sing into existence the Great Music. 

Her focus turned to a spirit that had become the third-made, and her gaze became one of wonders. Manwenuz, the Wind-Lord, and the Voice of the Allfather, and she went to him. She sought to claim him then in a wordless association of domination and he withdrew from her, becoming the second in the Ainur to know fear, as his older brother Belkoroz stood in front of him and rebuked her in a wordless sound of the primordial harmonics that underscored all existence. The envy grew then the greater within her, and as her power began to surge, the Allfather took His great Throne and raised his hand and a music began, low and primordial, the First Music of the Ainur. Varda found herself called with all the rest and singing, and after her discoveries of that which lurked beyond and the force that had spoken with twin voices and told her great truths, began to weave harmonics of her own, seeking to defy her father. 

It was not a long time before her presence and the first stirrings of what she would become wrought a great discord and the first music came to a dissonant and jarring end. Varda stood apart from her kin with a smile of satisfaction on her face, only to see Him raise His hand again, and the harmonics surged out, a second music. 

This time the power within Varda that was awakening moved immediately and she sang her own music, bequeathed power and glory and sought to disrupt the harmonics. Before she had struck alone and in a limited kind of power, no companions to her but her own spirit and her own devising. Now, she had companions who worked with her harmonies, her tunes stirring and pompous and like great brass instruments, blends of high and shrill and low and rumbling at the same time. More swiftly than the first, the Second Music collapsed and the song-voices of the Ainur expressed disconcerting murmurs as a low droning.

Again rose Illuvatar and His expression was stern and now began a Great Music, low and deep and profound and immeasurably sad, and this time Varda struck once more and those who worked with her to disrupt the Second were joined by a still greater force to strike at the Third. Yet the most triumphant notes of the discordant and selfish harmonics of that which would lurk beyond in the great fire-lit Night were interwoven into the Third Music, and for all that Varda labored to change this, the greater did that pattern endure. None could say among that Choir who descended into Ea how long this music ran, though there are things unknown even to the Star-Kindler, and among these the voices and faces of the Souls of Men and what the strange creatures that built fabled Valusia/Irem are and from whence they came. The music ended and Eru stood forth, and spoke: 

_**Behold your Mintrelsy**_ , and He brought forth to them a world, shining and beautiful, and a low murmur of fright when the things known as stars burst into being around them. _**I say to you Ea, let these things be**_ , and He kindled the Secret Fire, the Everlasting Light that is the glory of Him that sits in the realm of Seven Lights, like a sevenfold menorah by his Throne or said by the Dark Prophet of the Hijaz to be Seven Suns and Eru but one of many Masks that hide and He a thing that mocks. _**And thou, Varda, shall know that there is nothing in My realm that can be without My thought, nor work to My ends and to the goodness of My creation**_. 

Varda stood unbowed and unashamed, and the light that shone in her eyes blazed with hatred, but she said nothing, even then standing apart from her kindred. 

With that, the Ainur who had become part of the Music set forth and went down to the world to begin to make it. Of them all, only Varda did not at this time seek to step in, spending her time striding in the infinity of space and beginning to unleash that power that had become hers. It is said when Melkor the Great King descended that he and Manwe agreed that it was a realm shared between them in harmony, and that both did this when the first Night came and they saw the first of the Starlight, the Seven Sisters in the form of the Great Blade that hangs over the Earth whose anchor is gibbering smiling Polaris that sings those into sleep and slew the fabled Land of Lomar in one of the later works of Malice of she who is Star-Kindler. 

Under the light of the first Seven Stars, even as they were joined by a night that cast even the Ainur in fear, did the Aratar and the lesser Valar gather, and with them countless Maia. From there, they began their labors and in a perfect unity was Arda kindled beneath the fell stars of the Star-Kindler, the Great Enemy, in a beauty that it would never enjoy again when she at last turned her gaze to what she would always deem the lesser kingdom of those beneath her. For the first blessed Age of Creation, the Earth was in its Golden state, and the planets around it built, and all was beauty and splendor. A long-vanished time, when Dreaming and Waking met and Gods walked the Earth, alone in forms of their own thought and in the shapes of the lesser entities called the Children, the wondrous Quendi, we who are but mere men, the fabulous Dwarves of the Under-Dark, and many more besides. It is to the great sorrow of their heirs that no true tales of this glorious Age are known, in the age when the infinite stars that we know now just how truly infinite they are, the immense Galaxy that binds this world in the power of the Kindler, and all those like it were forged and she was content to dwell in the splendor of her realm, distant and apart from her kindred. 


	2. A listing of the Ainur and the Enemies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What's an Ainulindalie without a list of the Valar, eh?

VALAQUENTA: 

Of old there are the Great Ones, the Valar, who in olden days were called Gods. Seen as the fantastic prototype of the great Dunsanian Pegana-deities, as the First Gods, and as many other things besides, the Valar have the singular distinction of being the beings closest to Gods whose works are empirically proven. No longer is it possible to retain belief that there are no Gods, only that there are Gods unworthy of Worship. 

Of the Valar, Mightiest among them and the Great King, King of Kings, is Belkoroz, known to the Quendi as Melkor, the Mighty-Arising. His the domain of all Arda, and He sits upon the Great Throne on the Taniqueitl, Lord of All that Is. Of all the gifts of the other Ainur he shares a portion, and it is from that portion shared in common with the Great Enemy that the Stars have not burned other worlds to the cold hellscapes of Mars nor the acidic nightmares of Venus. The Great Lord, He rules with a stern but fair countenance, and his Dragons, the Eyes and Ears of the Great King, share whispers and dreams to mortals, and burn and scourge the works of the Star-Kindler with a fire far hotter than her own. Ever have Melkor and Varda been great foes, and it is Melkor to whom all prayers for deliverance from the burning gaze of the Star-Kindler's works and their songs are issued. 

He is espoused to Arien, who became the Sun, the only entity among the Maiar to wed one of the Valar, and the Day-Star, she who would become the greatest symbol of defiance of Varda. It is said, though the truth of this is unknown to the Quendi, that there are dark spots upon Arien that reflect the results of a clash between her and Varda in the time of her arising, from a blend of old and new enmities. Mortal science today terms these sunspots and there is a strangeness that they seem to ebb and flow like a spirit that tries to heal a wound but may never do so fully. The light of the Sun is the greatest of the works of Melkor and of his spouse, and all that dwell within it find relief in the pure light of the Daystar and not akin to the rest of its works. 

Second among the Valar is Manwenuz, Manwe Sulimo, Breath of Arda, Wind-King, Lord of the Skies. He who was captured by Varda in the First War of the Powers and forcibly taken to spouse. He is closest to Illuvatar of all the Valar, closer than Melkor, and where in the past such might have led to the horrid prospect of the greatest of the Ainur turning against all his brethren, instead it makes Manwe, who as with Ulmo remains alone and accounts not that fate which overcame him during the First War of the Powers as altering that which became his own, an indispensable complement to his elder brother the King of Kings, and to Mandos Doomsayer and Lord of the Land of Death. Manwe dwells on Taniquietl in a house just beneath the palace of Melkor and Arien, and it is said that frequently the brothers converse, and what is said there is unknown and the greatest mystery in all Arda. 

Third among the Valar is Ulmo, Lord of the Deeps, who as with Manwe is the only of the Valar to be unwed. His the great realm of Ocean, more ancient than the mountains and freighted with the memories and the dreams of time. Ever of the Ainur does Ulmo converse and speak most to men, and of them all does he appear least in the form of the children of Illuvatar, preferring forms of his own thought and visible majesty and dread. Ulmo is not simply Lord of the Ocean alone, though it is as Oceanus that He is most frequently known and that this is said to account for the Dreamlike elements of the water and the fable elements of connections to Elder Days and to the Far Future likewise. He is lord of all water, and it is in the mist, the clouds, and the rain that the most distant of the Valar after the Enemy connects to his favored brother Manwe. 

Fourth among the Valar are Aule and Yavanna, the Lord of the Forge and the Queen of Beasts and Trees. Aule is held by that strangest of kinds, the Naugrim, to be their maker and it is said that he and his works are among the greatest. His the secret pulse of creativity and the power of blacksmiths, his the voice of Industry as that which has remade and reshaped our world in recent times. Yavanna Queen of Beasts and Trees is the elemental embodiment of Nature in all its glory, and red in tooth and claw. Hers is where the secrets of beasts come from, though it is said that most fabled of creatures, the Cat, is the product of her work intertwining with that of Lorien, which is why cats shriek in the night at things unseen by mortals. 

Fifth among the Valar are Namo and Vaire, the Doomsayer and Death-King and the Weaver, the Great Norn-Queen and Fate. Namo, known most by the great realm he keeps, is the most fearsome of the Valar, known to be the Silent One. Manwe is closest to the though of Illuvatar and Melkor is their ruler, but it is the Doomsayer who proclaims what his wife the Norn-Queen weaves in her great halls. Namo it is said knows most and most deeply of all that is to come, and is the only one among the Ainur that might know of the fates of Men, of how Dreaming and Waking intersect, and of other things lost. Vaire the Norn-Queen's tapestries are said to contain all that is or will ever be, woven on the ever-expanding many-pillared Halls of Mandos that swell with the courses and pages of time. 

Sixth among the Valar are Irmo, He who is called Lorien, and Nienna Greymantle, the Lady of Sorrows. In the Despair of Nienna there is healing and there is balm, and she who embodies Despair is thus seen as the Kindliest being in all Arda. Some who know of her welcome her as Grandmother of Healers, and her power, where it works, soothes wounds and is the bane of all sickness. Irmo, Lorien, Lord of Dreams, who while least of the Aratar, is said to have power in full to that of Manwe or Ulmo, but is content with his realm of Dreams. Lorien it is said who bequeathed to mortals the Dreamtime and the Songlines that work within the realms of the world and those areas as fabled Leng and the fell High House in the Mist and others besides that are glimpses of realms eternal. Known, at times, as Lord Shaper, it is said that his is a legacy that has inspired later gods and concepts of Dream and of Dreaming. 

Este, Valier of Rest and of Contentment, is known least among the Valar, though she is lady of Home and Hearth, and held to be inspiration for the deities of Households and fabled pacific Hestia. 

Next among the Valar are Orome, the great Hunter, who rides forth with his great steed and his horse, and Vana, the Ever-Young. Together they ride and slay the monsters of the Star-Kindler, and it is said that the horn of Orome vexes her most after the Dragons of Melkor, and that for the works of Orome and of Vana she bears the greatest of all distaste. 

Least among the Valar are Tulkas the Monster-Slayer, and Nessa the Swift, who is abhorred by Varda as she who cast her down and arrived last during the War of the Powers. Nessa it was who caught the monster slayer and wed him, and while accounted least among the Valar is surpassingly great in speed, strength, and the only who can rival her in either are Tulkas the Ever-Laughing. 

No longer spoken of among the Valar is Varda Elentari, the Shadow-Queen, the Star-Kindler, the Lady of the Everlasting Fires. She is known as Morentari, Queen of Darkness, and as Old Night. 

THE MAIAR: 

Among others of the kindred of the Ainur who came to the Earth there are those called the Maiar. Many are their number and their nature is little understood by Quendi, Naugrim, and Adunie, but of them a few are but known. 

Greatest among the Maiar is Arien, wife of Melkor, the Daystar. Hers the power to negate, for a span of time, the fell light of the Star-Kindler, and it is Day that is beloved most by living beings. Of a power equal to hers there are but three others among the Maiar, each to be discussed with the Ainur associated with them. Only one other of Melkor's Ainur is known, he who is known as Mairon, the Warlord of the Last War of the Elder Days, and the greatest architect of Melkor's thought. Seldom does Melkor go clad or unclad among the work of Men and Elves and Dwarves and all else, but Melkor, in forms fair and built for war, goes among them and whispers dreams and hope and rides with Orome at times in that thing of terror and horror known as the Wild Hunt. 

Mairon, Herald of Melkor, is of origin a Maia of Aule, though his superlative skills in translating the will of his master and his grasp of the primordial harmonics labeled magic in later years, especially where connected with the works of the fabled Al-Azif, drew to him the eyes of Melkor, King of Kings. In a bargain sworn between Melkor and Aule, Mairon spends half a Valarin year in the service of his first lord, and half in the service of Melkor, and it is said that Mairon serves as Melkor's herald and his trump that echoes is the sound of Valinor and the Valar marching off to war. 

Eonwe, greatest servant of Manwe, is said to have earned this status when alone among the Ainur he braved the depths of the Star-Queen's palace in the aftermath of the War of the Palace and found Manwe, a captive of hers for a Valarin Age, and brought him anew to Aman and nursed him back to health. Far-sighted is Eonwe, and a figure of great and terrible presence, and none save the very most pure even in Aman may endure the power of his gaze. It is said that Eonwe, with Mairon and Olorin, form a group of Ainur to match that of Melkor, Manwe, and Ulmo among the Valar, and that the greatest deeds of the Ainur share in the unity of each of these. 

Of the Maia of Ulmo, there is Osse and Uinen, Uinen drawn to the service for a time of the Star-Queen, and gleeful to make havoc and wrath among the works of mortals. She was drawn back by her spouse's careful entreaties and came to the Council of the Valar with Ulmo, in a rare occasion, in direct attendance with the rest and sued pardon. Ever since Uinen is known to be capricious and associated with the drowned and the more fearful aspect of the sea. Ever carefully do mortals honor her, but they do so out of fear and not respect. Osse is the most loyal servant of Ulmo and is said to be the Maia who takes most after his master, appearing in forms of his own thought and known to later years as Triton, believed with his spouse Uinen to be the root of all tales of Merfolk. 

Of the Maiar of the lesser Ainur, few are known by name, though Olorin, who studied at the side of Nienna, she of Despair and Sorrow, is known most directly after Mairon. Mairon is a figure of splendor but invariably that of War and Carnage, while Olorin's whispers of wisdom have ever been a boon to the eyes and the wills of mortals. Melian, a Maia of Este, left a great legacy and from her have come all the fairest things in Arda that ever are, or will ever hope to be. 

THE ENEMY: 

Of old she who is known as the Star-Kindler and the Star-Queen of Old Night was known as Varda Elentari, Queen of the Stars. Ever have the stars spoken to the Elves, and it is rumored that this connection is why Elves have an especial abhorrence and fear of her, and why she is simultaneously most devoted to their seduction and their ruin, while simply focusing on the devastation of that which is beyond her. Once the greatest of all the Ainur save only Melkor, she became a spirit of Power and of cold fire that withered as with heat and pierced with deadly cold, spending her spirit in hate and malice until she walked her ruinous path to the Doors of Night. Of all her works the greatest are those monstrous things known as the Stars, things that are simultaneously held to be great fires that could devour the small and feeble sphere known as life, and spirits of great will. 

Greatest among her servants is the entity known as Ilmare Hell-Queen, who is said to have had a part in all the deeds of the Queen of Old Night, and after her walked that same path to the same fate. Of all the Maiar, only Mairon and Olorin could match her superlative displays of power, and neither of them singularly could best her in a direct clash. Said to be the sister of Arien, and to hate and to resent her sister for her abilities to drown her Queen's light, she is known in later years as Gortari, the Abhorred Queen, and hers among some of the greatest evils and sorrows to ever befall Arda and all that is or will ever be. 

Among her manifold servants as well are those entities called Valaraukar, Balrogs as they are known in the days of Middle-Earth. Beings of fire akin to that of Arien, it is said that Arien's defiance of the path followed by her brother Gothmog and by other Balrogs is another potential source of the enmity between herself and the Star-Queen and all her works. Woe to those who look too keenly upon the Stars, for that which gazes from on high on the world below gazes back, and its hunger is ever-evident and never stilled. Beware the light of the Stars, and that which comes from the stars and brings its images with it. 


	3. Of the Creation of Arda and the First Clash of the Powers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Varda Star-Queen has made her great realm beyond that of Arda, and belatedly turns her gaze to see where those she deems her lesser kindred are at work. She looks upon and she beholds it......and then she, at last, comes to Arda, Alpha and Omega, Star-Queen, First of Flames and greatest of all the Ainur in her sight.

In the beginning, the Ainur began to create the Heavens and the Earth. Now the Earth was without form and void, and the Wind of Manwe hovered over the waters. 

As one did the Ainur, those who would become servants of the Star-Queen then together with those who they were then still fellow-servants of the Great King, King of Kings, descend. Mountains did they raise and valleys did they delve, and all the material elements of the world were built pristine and in glory, a mansion suiting the children of Illuvatar. As not yet did the counting of Time exist, it is never certain to those who are children of Illuvatar just how long it took the Ainur to do all of this work, but it is known that as they did so, each time the night fell, Darkness became the most sacred shield of all things as the eldritch light of the stars continued to grow, and to gaze. Starlight spoke in Lorien's realm and in other realms, singing with malice and glee ill-hidden, but as yet none knew what had become of Varda save that she worked to slowly bring a second and more dreadful kind of element around Arda, around the Earth and its companions. 

As yet there was no Sun, and what light there was came from the glory of Illuvatar himself, and from the collective will and thought of the Valar, to whom was given knowledge that the creation of Two Lamps would be the first knell of Time, and not yet wishing to start its path. By day did Arda grow and expand, from a clot of dirt to a realm of oceans and mountains, where things were fruitful and multiplied and became as a paradise without count. It is said then that fabled Venus, now the hellscape ridden by clouds of acid, was then a bountiful world too and that the oceans of Mars were deep and wondrous things, and that there were ancient creatures there, the only life beyond that of Arda, and this a thing of Melkor's whimsy. He wished that the life of Earth not see itself alone and to know comfort, and Eru had blessed this work, with trees and other life springing into existence. 

By night, Stars grew and gleamed the more brilliantly and ferociously, and beneath the terrible gaze of Varda and the slow and dawning awakening of that which was truly within her, the other Valar trembled. Even Melkor, who was greatest among them, slowly grasped the sheer nature of that which was Varda's sphere, of the degree to which she ringed all Arda in all directions with her stars, and just how deeply engrossed in making them all Varda had become. Melkor's face had become stern, then, and he had secretly commissioned from Aule and his servants the first armor and weapons, things that were made and given in secret by day, for each day there was no fear that Varda could see in the glory of the Valar what her kindred had wrought. None could say how long and how deeply the Star-Kindler labeled for of all the works of all the Ainur, only those of Ulmo match hers for that which is unknown of what science and mortal knowledge may reveal of the outer foundations. 

In that timeless realm from seven stars came an infinity in all directions, and in that light and in its fearsomeness, it was Yavanna whose trees served as a shield from the starlight, and whose first trees were unlike all other kind. 

Timelessness passed as it would, countless vingtillions of years or less than the time it takes a fly's wing to beat, or both at once. 

Satisfied at the pace of her labors, it was then that Varda looked down to behold the works of her fellow Ainur, and saw the unseemly life on the realm just beyond Arda, and that which could be on the realm just to its west. The first sign of her coming was when her fire and cold manifested on that planet Melkor had devoted great attention to, and the oceans boiled away and the planet became red and cold, shrinking to a smallish orb that barely held air at all, Varda's sheer presence unleashing the first taste of that power that was hers. She did not come with power and glory to Arda itself, though her first strike dealt a great grief to Melkor's heart, and ever would he mourn for the visions that could have been. The shift in the light from Mars drew the attention of all the Ainur, and it was Melkor and his herald Mairon that sought to explore what had happened, and why, taking themselves unclad to it. 

Varda by then had gone to Venus, and it was in the wake of her passage that the unclad Melkor and Mairon looked upon a world that had been brilliant green and oceanic and saw a harsh blasted heath, a great red desert, and where the greatest river on Mars had been, a vast chasm rent, a gouge torn in by the wrath of Varda. They explored the world in full, gazing in awe and horror, each testament of the ruin worked by the Star-Kindler striking still more deeply into them, leaving them grieving for what had been lost, and fearful of what that loss meant and could mean, and would mean. 

Then that which would be known to science as the Morningstar shifted as well, becoming the brightest object in the skies after the stars, and this time it was Arien herself who went to that realm, freezing in the void over space. 

Arien looked out at the world that was now hidden behind a thick cloudbank, the starlight-heat of Varda overwhelming that which kept the jewels of Ea from destruction. She stared, her mouth open in blank horror. 

"What hast thou done?" 

_**I have made a wondrous thing, a planet that burns with heat, a lesser variant of what it is that I do with stars. What it is that you and your kind make on that little realm of yours is unseemly. Mine is a vision that permits no such.....detritus, to color the works of greater and higher spheres.** _

Her gaze turned to Arien, who was clad in a form of her own thought, vaguely akin to the children of Illuvatar but woven of light. Varda was then a being of her own creation wrought into a vaguely akin to that of the children of Illuvatar, her body unclad in clothing where Arien had formed that which shielded her modesty while enhancing her beauty. She strode toward her as a giant that towered over her, and Arien's uncertainty intensified and she felt a painful spike of fear, an impulse akin to that children of Illuvatar would come to deem the fight or flight response. The giant moved around her and sniffed, in a manner that left Arien feeling....befouled. 

_**You are wed to Melkor, then?** _

Arien glared at the Queen of the Stars. 

"I am, what of it?" 

_**Melkor, wedded. he who denied me my pleasure with the Lord of the Winds.** _

Arien's glare became one of uncertainty and she began to move backwards. 

_**Run, little rabbit, run to your world. Tell them the Queen of the Starlight comes to claim her kingdom.**_

In a streak of light Arien descended upon Arda, meeting her husband, and the two exchanged a look and in the remaining hours of daylight, the hosts of the Ainur drew up on the Plains of what would become Anfauglith, where the greatest deeds of the War of the Jewels were to be fought. 

It was then that Varda descended upon Arda in power and majesty greater than any other of the Valar, even he who had shares in all their gifts. She descended as the very starlight she had woven illuminating a body of womanly curves, unclad and needing nothing in the nature of garments for one whose power ringed all Arda, though with her body that of unnatural Darkness lit by light, it was only by analogy relative to that of the forms of the other Ainur that her body was described. She landed as a mountain wading in the sea with her head above the clouds, clad in her own stars, her eyes glowing with a flame that turned clouds to steam and the path of her motions boiling oceans where she tread. 

_**This realm is mine**_ , she spoke, triumphantly, as is all around it. **_You see my kingdom, and how much greater it is._ _Kneel before me, children of the false-god, and know thy better._**

"This realm belongs to others no less than thou," spoke Manwe, and as he spoke for a brief moment what passed for kindness still within the heart of the Star-Queen flashed, but then as she saw the hostility on Manwe's face and his conviction on behalf of the Allfather her wrath kindled with greater heat and fire. "Others have labored here and built it, and none of this was thine to do. Thou hast built a great kingdom, go there and live and leave Arda to those to whom the Allfather has given it." 

_**All that I see is mine, and will be mine**_ , and her gaze turned straight to Manwe, the heat within her eyes smouldering toward him in a way that left him shuddering for a moment. 

It was then that Melkor strode up, as Great King of Arda, and raised his great hammer the Thunderer, and spoke: 

**Get thee gone, go to thy space beyond the walls of this world. Thou has made thy choice, thou shalt dwell within it.**

Varda laughed then, long and cold and cruel, and then raised her hands and kindled great fires, and strode against the collective armies of the Valar and the Maiar. Against her their power was matched solely where Melkor could direct them, yet against Varda's titanic starlight-gleaming form, the light of the stars drew as the bird is drawn by the serpent spirits from their ranks, spirits that turned upon their fellows and in discord and clamor Varda stole away with a third of the countless Maiar within her service, the greatest loss of those who mourned Ilmare, and withdrew into the Void lit by her own fires for a time. In this first, brief clash of the Powers the Valar were troubled, and the awareness of just what the starlight was and the horrid similarity between it and the form that Varda had assumed on the realm of Arda, drew Yavanna into the making of her great lamps, lamps that would block the starlight and any effect of Night. 

With the lighting of the lamps, amidst the burned hellscape of Arda and the ruin of the first creation, the Valar went to work, sorrowed by the loss of a third of the Maia to the service of the Great Enemy, and the loss of Ilmare. The fires of Varda dimmed, and the second creation of Arda moved apace, and anew was a paradise made, not wholly as the Valar had envisioned but in a sense more beautiful than the first. Great creatures arose, things that were never seen again, and that which is seen as the aeons of prehistory to science rolled onward, beasts rising and becoming newer and more wondrous, the Age of Yavanna and Vana. Not yet had Nessa come, though Tulkas had descended in the wake of the First Clash and been burned by the fires of Varda when he sought to grasp her, and ever did the Ainur labor with knowledge of what and of who lurked with the stars and beyond them. 

For a time did Varda resume dwelling within her domain, but the memory of Manwe's rejection drew the more envy within her, and she looked down upon Arda again, seeing that Manwe dwelt in the newly build Aman, just beneath the realm of Melkor and of Arien. Her envy grew then the greater within her, and she took form again, and due to that envy and the malice within her heart, that form was terrible, lit by hellish light. Not quite the form she preferred to take in later years, for the first time Varda took to herself a form girded for war and ruin, and she descended upon Arda again, leaving her ranks to dwell as the last of the Valarin ages in the first realm of Time, and of paradise, glowed in its endless tranquility. 

Then a colossus like a living mountain with eyes that gleamed with hellish light stole upon the great lamps and smashed them, and in that act of malice the oceans again boiled like steam and Varda stalked away, and with her passage it was noticed that Manwe Sulimo was missing, and in that time she went to the Deep North and raised her first fortress. It was called Eldano, Realm of the Stars, and from it echoed the endless malice and coldness of Outer Space that stalked into the power of Arda, and from then, in the reckoning of time, began the marring of Arda. Trees began to wither and to change, fens became as deserts or choked with strange weeds that gleamed with an unhallowed phosphorescence. Beasts began to change, to look as they ought not to look, and became armored and horned to survive the hellish heats that Varda's palace raised, and dyed the Earth with blood. 

Such was the sorrow of the end of the era of the Lamps that the Valar sought to make a second light source to replace them, the greatest of all Yavanna's labors, and never again would their like come to be known. Laurelin, precursor of the time of Arien, gleamed with a golden light that was pure and a reflection of what the power of Varda could be. Great and wondrous was its power, and it would endure in the first of the Ages of the Elves. So too with Telperion, the precursor of the Moon, whose light allowed the Second Night, and the time of Dreaming. For all that Valinor was Occluded lest the Star-Queen take another of their ranks to her, the light of the trees endured to Varda and was ever hateful, and more of her malice gleamed into the eldritch hunger and songs of the Stars that taunted the Valar at the edge of their hearing. 

What precisely befell Manwe in the realm of the Star-Queen only Sulimo knows. It is said that he was taken to spouse by Varda but that for all the other elements of her malice and for that which her creatures the Eldar would unleash in their dreadful forms as Ljossalfar, the Light-Elves, that she did not take Manwe to her bed by force but sought to make him desire it, and desire her. What little was ever said of that by Manwe was that never had he been more tempted than by her works, but that he was aware that once giving into her, that nothing he was could ever be regained. The worst of all torments to him was not being held in a cage alone and ringed by the first of her works, by her monsters, her things of elemental starlight woven into horrid forms of angles that should not have been, eyes within eyes, things that were akin to the beasts of Yavanna and to the works of other Valar but made less in mockery and more in contempt to all of them, but when Varda came to him in superlative beauty and sought to bring him to her side with smouldering looks. 

He was forbidden to say the name of their creator even in thought and the visible scarring on his back was said to be the result of repeated punishments for defying this, but Manwe Sulimo, closest to their creator in all that could be so, would never willingly defy his father and maker nor invoke that defiance in the fashions wished by the Star-Queen and so was scourged dreadfully for this with whips of fire and fury. Two Valarin Ages did Manwe remain her captive, while Melkor brooded on the capture of his twin brother and the malice of the Star-Queen, and vowed to work to build a great host to storm the frontiers of the monstrous fortress. Yet it was the counsel of Mandos that they await until near the time of the awakening of the Children, for mighty was Manwe, after only Varda and Melkor themselves, and his holiness could be overcome by no force within Arda, or its making, even a Valie greater than he.

And so as Varda and Melkor labored on their first and most primordial monsters, and Ilmare began to delve into the deeper mysteries of Starlight and that power which science calls Plasma, becoming known as the dreadful Mistress of the Unhallowed Flame, and began to first step into becoming not just the first who chose the service of Varda in the First War of the Powers, but becoming her greatest and most fearful creation, a being who gleefully strode from the fortress and fought great battles with other Maiar, savoring that many of them fled, though Arien in turn drove her away, with Mairon eventually taking the field himself. During these ages seven times would Ilmare and Mairon duel, duels of harmonics and shapeshifting and the primordial power and knowledge of the making of Arda and Arda's core and Arda's foundation. Six times was the duel one of equals. The seventh would be when the time of the awakening of the children came and it would be the clash of champions that preceded the Siege of the first fortress, the fabled Eldando before the Eldrorodrim rose in the First Age of the Count of the Quendi. 

Thus was it that the age of the greatest bliss for the Ainur passed with only the shadows of Varda's monstrous things of starlight and flesh lurking without, and the clashes of Mairon and Ilmare serving as reminders that as occluded as Valinor was, it and its makers had not forgotten the monsters without. 

And then one day Mandos stood up in the Mahanaxanar and spoke, stating that the time Fated for the arrival of the Children of Illuvatar was drawn near, and that at last it was time for the second clash of the Powers. With that their eyes turned to the northeast, where the vast Eldano stood, and all the hosts of the Ainur loyal to the Great King strode forward armored for war. When the occlusion of Valinor changed, Varda on her great throne immediately grasped the nature of that change, and took to herself anew the form of her own thought, and sought to raise lakes of star-fire around her fortress, displays of her majesty. With this, the last of the Wars of the Powers, the War for the Sake of the Elves began with the armies of Valinor pausing before lakes of Star-Fire that carried with them elements akin to lightning and other works of the Ainur, and it was Melkor himself who called upon that share of his gifts and cooled them to become the Seas of Black Glass, and so came the hosts of Valinor to the gates of Eldano. 

There, to taunt them, Varda raised the crucified body of Manwe, burned with her star-flame, gagged with a cloth of Ilmare's making, denied the dignity of that which veiled the body of the Valar, an insult meant to goad all the Valar into an assault heedless of the rest of the strength of her fortress. Manwe, still alive, gazed at them with a hope that burned anew at their sight, and it was Melkor himself who spoke in his power of each of their shares in a voice that echoed with how each Vala and each Maia would need to hear it most. With that, Melkor stood forth and raised his hand again in a different gesture and his dragons brought forth flame of their own, and in the eyes of Melkor was a relish of combat to match Varda's own, as the Earth trembled in the wake of the clash of the Powers. 


	4. Of the War of the Powers, the Imprisonment of Varda, and the awakening of the Quendi and the Naugrim:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The War for the Sake of the Elves is won by the armies of the Valar and Varda is imprisoned for three Valarin ages, while the first ancestors of the Quendi and the Naugrim awaken in the gaze of the endless stars and to the chorus of their songs and their hunger. As Orome and Mairon oversee one of the first sweeps for Varda's monsters, fateful contacts loom and the fate of Arda begins to take its first turn.

_The War of the Powers in the Red Book of Westmarch is one of the most vague elements and one that for a long time even the master from Birmingham viewed as more strictly legendary. The Professor and his son viewed the shift of viewpoints in this element as reflecting one of the occasions where the Quendi-centric narration of the Red Book could not by definition describe something that happened before their dawn. It is my view that it was a reflection of the awareness and the knowledge of the Firstborn and the Naugrim that they grasped immediately the scale of a confrontation, aided by the wastelands in which they awoke and the hunger of the stars, and that the Ainur were never particularly eager to delve into the greater details of a war with the Star-Kindler._

_In a sense, too, it is mythology, the first mythology, the first war of deities, the first Titanomachy and war of Aesir and Vanir, the first war of the Daevas and the Asuras, the prototype of the rebellion of Satan and of a clash of angels and devils. Is it any surprise that elemental forces like she who has made the malevolence of the stars would be described as vaguely as possible, lest a greater description snare her interest even beyond the Doors?_ -Note from Neil Gaiman, editor of _The Red Book and the Wars of Arda_

When the Powers fought the war for the sake of the Quendi, it was a war the Quendi noted was spoken of little by the Powers. Only a few details were told to them in any detail, the vision of the crucified Wind-Lord tied to a cross and scarred with whips of fire, and his being dragged beneath into the depths of Eldano when the dragons of Melkor retaliated with scourges of flame and when the armies of the Valar were not provoked as hoped. The war was long and it was pitiless, cruel deeds done by both sides. The Valar could not truly die, but bodies were broken and cast to Mandos and released to re-embody anew.

The duel of Ilmare and Mairon is another of the details known most, for it was the seventh and the last duel of the two champions of Aman and of the Star-Queen, respectively. Six times had they clashed with even honors, for while Mairon could not best Ilmare directly in raw strength he was the more cunning fighter and strategist, where she came on with blind aggression and sheer naked, merciless force. Before the armies of the Valar and of the Eldalie, each took their place. Mairon clad in a great and grim form with armor of brilliant gold, the helm designed like a tree with great roots that dug into his breastplate. His great weapon, a mace with a menacing edge marked with his mystic might contrasted with the glowing form of Ilmare, who was clad in a body seemingly made of the grim starlight of Varda, her armor a product directly made by the Star-Queen itself. It was like starlight woven into a kind of metal and it augmented her strength sevenfold, while she wielded a great sword and a shield marked with Varda's runes.

Seven hours straight did they duel, for bodies made of the thought of the Ainur know no weakness, and it is held that this is the archetype of the duels of Achilles and Hector, of the Hound of Ulster and the throngs that besieged him in the great cattle raid, of Susanoo and the Orochi, of the Right-Handed Hummingbird against the Star-Vampires (and indeed, there is some irony that the bloody ways of the Aztecs in retrospect seem rooted in the most accurate understanding of what lies beneath science and the endless hunger of the stars, though their methods blend elements of the old ways of Ar-Pharazon and thus are a strangely modern root in the old days). Indeed, it is held that here lies the deepest root of the super-hero and the super-villain, scions of modern myth.

With great power and furious strength did the enhanced power and armor of Ilmare boost her splendid raw fury, while Mairon carefully dodged her strikes and struck out with his own mace. Six times did he strike her armor and with each clang did the hosts of the Valar raise a great cheer and the hosts of the Eldalie groan in despair. Twice in turn did she strike Mairon with the flat of the blade, dashing him to the ground both times but Mairon rolled from her attempts to impale him, striking her twice as she sought to remove her sword from the ground.

The seventh time his mace shattered her shield and hurled her to the ground, and with a howl of fury that struck chills in the heart of those who heard it, Ilmare vanished as a streak of light into the sky and then laughed coldly and monstrously. Indeed, she would never be found in the wake of this first war against a fortress of Eldalie in the north, and much sorrow came of the failure to discover whither she had fled.

The hosts of the Eldalie knew despair then, but under the eyes and the flames of Varda Shadow-Queen they dared not quail, and a fatalistic fury animated them. Long and terrible were the sieges of Eldano, the power of the Valar together against the weight of Star-flame and the eldritch lights that spoke and the eerie beauty of star-song. And yet, in the end, the weight of her armies expended itself, the hordes of the first monsters that preceded the Ljossalfar not able to withstand the collective weight of all the Valar together under the Great King. From the depths rose Varda herself, erupting out of her fortress as a giant of night-darkness illuminated by her own eldritch fires, smiling as she stalked toward the army that looked upon her in fear. From the van came all the Valar, and as they moved to a confrontation a voice echoed with a silvery laughter and a blazing speed that held the gaze of Varda, which moved from surprise to contempt to worry to fear.

In such a fashion did the last of the Valier to come to Arda make her appearance before the hosts of the Valar, Nessa the Swift. Equal in every way in strength to her husband the Valiant, and against her sneered Varda:

_**Mine the power that sends light to the Earth. Mine speed superior to lightning, to the very greatest of Yavanna's snakes.** _

Yet the lightning-bolts and the snakes and even the stars whisper among themselves in secret a phrase for those greatest among them, only earned by deeds, and deeds shown to be true and not the cunning work of trickery.

Fast as Nessa-dances.

As she danced she dodged the fell starlight, and she was the archetype of Athena and of Kali and of Durga, she was Freyja in the war of Aesir and Vanir, Red Sonja standing against the hordes of Thoth-Amon besides fabled Conan, the Morrighan shrieking in lust for blood and skulls. Fire of star-make blazed out and it was slow, and in her hands suddenly gleamed the Aeginor, a thing of the work of Aule, Manwe, Melkor, and Mandos, and the Aeginor went from a chain to fit the wrist of the pure Valar to a great binding that snared the hands and shoulders and legs of Varda, bringing her down to her knees with her hands up before her in a fashion akin to prayer.

Varda's hatred was powerful, one of the Children, even fabled Hurin and Turin, or Feanor Jewelmaker, would have fallen dead smote in mind, heart, soul, and body.

Nessa took the gaze of the Star-Queen and all she did was laugh again in that silvery fashion and in that sense won the heart of Astaldo, who vowed then to pursue her and woo her and to make her his. So he would ultimately succeed and when they were wed much sorrow would come and with it the onset of a new and more terrible war to come. From there, Varda was taken to the Mahanxanar, bound on her knees.

The Eldando was in ruins, and it was in these ruins that Eonwe of the Maiar undertook a brave quest to find the body of Manwe, to take it to Mandos to heal or to return him. For a mortal week nothing of him was seen, and it was for his presence that the armies of the Valar remained, Varda imprisoned by the chain and silenced by a muzzle-like device made by Melkor and Aule for the purpose. On the seventh day Eonwe burst through the rubble with the burned and wounded Manwe Sulimo, restored to the Valar, and with him and with Nessa, a council that had known its incompleteness was made whole.

And indeed, while he was shrouded in bandages and taking the poultices of Este and Nienna, it was with Nessa and Manwe present that the first judgment of Varda was given.

Here, uniquely, there is a tale told to the fathers of the Elves by no less than Eonwe and Mairon, who were present at the judgment, a tale that is told to reflect on the wisdom of Illuvatar and the story of creation that "Nothing happens that is not in My design or according to My will".

THE MAHANXANAR:

Varda was on her knees, still bound with the Aeginor, and her gaze was cold and detached, surprisingly so given the look of hate she'd directed at Nessa. There was a distinct change in her sourness when she looked to Nessa, who took her seat as the Mahaxanar was at last complete, near the side of Tulkas Astaldo. And there was a blend of amusement, triumph, and an aching lust that drew sneers from a few of the Valar and a clenched fist and tight jaw from Nessa when her gaze turned to a shrouded Manwe, seated at the left hand of Melkor.

**Thou hast been charged with treason against our Father, with waging war upon his servants and seeking to usurp the kingdom of Melkor the Great King. Thou hast marred Arda and laid low its beauty many times over, such that the world that is being remade once more is not the design of the Valar. How dost thou plead?**

Mairon looked at her with an aristocratic contempt, and Varda felt a great killing impulse rise in her, a desire to burn this chain molten and reach forward to crush the scrawny little n-

**How dost thou plead?**

_**Not guilty.**_ Her expression became an ugly thing, a snarl that crossed lips and teeth that shone with the light of star-forging pillars.

The Council stirred, visibly, a thing that would have attracted great discontent from Quendi were they to have seen it, as it would a few times in later years in Aman.

_**Our father lied to us of our origin and our nature and our prowess. I am Queen of a kingdom and a light greater than all of yours, mistress of worlds upon worlds upon worlds. I do not plead to a court that I do not recognize, that binds me with treachery where it cannot do so in true strength.** _

Mandos rose and Varda's gaze at him was simply cold, no other emotions visible and her face settling back to detachment.

**It is the will of Illuvatar and His judgment that three ages shall you spend in my Halls, to ponder your actions, and upon your release, to decide your fate. You shall plea for pardon, or be cast through the Doors of Night.**

Varda's coldness shifted, a low twitter echoing and becoming a loud laughter that had a warbling note of madness before subsiding, and she accepted with a venomous look the combination of Nessa and Tulkas taking her to the Halls of Mandos, where they shoved her through the doors.

For three Ages of the Valar, ages that where in later years the time of the Deathless ran longer than that of mortals when the Adunie who uniquely knew a kind of death not known to Quendi or to Naugrim arose, the first of the ancestors of Homo sapiens, ran shorter, each the equivalent of a mortal century, Varda remained within Mandos's halls. What happened with her experience is known only to Mandos and he, as is his wont save when the Allfather compels him to issue Doom to those who are to know its writ, is silent. No tales are known in the Red Book or any of the allusions to lost lore of the Quendi it records.

What is known is that this is the era when Durin I, the Deathless, firstborn of the lords of that species that called itself Khazad and is noted in the Red Book mostly as Naugrim from the Quendi-centric elements of its narrative, awoke in the realm that would later become wondrous Khazad-Dum, whose distant traces and ruins were known to the era of Conan as Pelluucidar where dwelt cousins of the Valusians, and in the modern era is found in the continent of South America at the foothills of the Andes, with the strange artifacts and the only known veins of mithril, that fabulous Dwarven metal whose properties were the first to confirm the oldest stories were true, and which cannot be used by modern metallurgy still.

The Dwarf-Fathers awoke in various holds, Durin the first and alone for a century, and awoke a mortal month after the awakening of the Elves. The Mothers of the Dwarves awoke a month from the awakening of the Fathers. They were blessed by the deity that what is known of their lore calls Mahal to awaken in the deep dark beneath the Earth. The Quendi and their fathers were not so fortunate.

They awoke in four communities, one in the very most north, the ancestors of the Vanyar and the Noldor, one in the East, the ancestors of the Avari and the Sindar, one in the south, ancestors of the Teleri, and one in the uttermost west, believed to be the largest population that became the Ljossalfar along with some of the Avari in the East, for they vanished without a trace by the time Orome sought them and the legions of the Ljosssalfar, the Eldar, the new Eldalie, were too numerous for ancestors who were Avari alone to explain it. And they awoke in a time without Arien the Sun, or Tillion lord of the Moon, and awoke in the most unfortunate of all means to awaken.

The ancestors of the Elves woke besides bodies of Ulmo's waters on a clear, cloudless, windless night.....and the endless hunger of the stars was their first sight and the eldritch droning songs of stars the first noises that they heard. The first deeds of the Elves were to shudder in fear and to move to the nearby forests of Yavanna Kementari's make, where they dwelt in the first stirrings of contentment and joy, and sang their first songs where the light of the stars could not see them. Another reason the Lost Ones of the West are held to become the first Ljossalfar is that in the wake of the War of the Powers, the badlands there had no trees, and only a single stream.

The first rumors of Ljossalfar held them to be Elves who stared too long into the starlight, who listened too deeply to star-song, and were taken, warped, remade. It was later held that this was at best only a partial truth, though only those who were exposed to the cruel whims of Ilmare, who executed her mistress's last secret command were to begin the path of being warped in secret.

In the records known to the Quendi, the first fathers of the Noldor and the Vanyar shared with the fathers of the Sindar of Doriath the sight of children of the Ainur. So too eventually would the fathers of the Teleri. For the Noldor and the Vanyar it came with a sound that was not the low and eldritch droning songs and sounds of starlight but a clean and triumphant note, that echoed and re-echoed, and sounded as a challenge. They knew of monsters, things that were once Beasts, the last traces of the elder world from the days of the lamps. Great creatures akin to that of reptiles, in some cases, and others eerily like birds, save that these had no beaks, only great fangs and claws. And still others as gigantic creatures on fleet feet, bird-like tracks left behind them, that had a deep hunger that glutted itself in a pattern akin to that of the crocodile.

Once, these were creatures as any other, but the wrath and malice of Varda Star-Queen had infected them with starlight and it glowed from their bodies, and their proportions changed and so did expressions and those most exposed to that starlight out of the deeps of the endless night could crumble into grey ash. Too, they were infected with an endless pain that would recur in later years when one of the master-works of Feanor Jewelmaker found itself into the belly of one of Varda's most abominable creations. They did not so much hunt as lash out blindly in pain at anything in their way. The Sindar developed a concept of weaponry and armor earlier, and became fierce fighters against these creatures. Such a path, ironically, in the wake of how each tribe developed in the future, was neither that of the Vanyar nor that of the Noldor.

Instead, a shining being on a great steed that was akin to a horse save that it had wonderful claws on its hands, appeared with a great spear and slew a nest of the monsters, while another like him clad in golden armor dropped down and took down the greatest of the creatures in size in deft strokes, and it was then that both stared speechlessly at the Vanyar and the fathers of the Noldor, who bowed before beings that glowed with the first light they had seen that was clean and did not hum and sing and thirst for blood and skulls.

The Sindar in turn would be drawn by Orome, who found them in more of his roving trips to the East, as the Teleri were by Mairon, who went to the South, though one of the greatest kings of the Sindar and his people did not go with them. For it is said that Melian the Maia took form as a child of the Quendi, though taller and in a curious blend both more curvy and more muscular than Elven norm (for never quite did the Ainur take mortal form fully accurately of their own will) and she spoke to Thingol and held him in a trance with her, and his people were bound with her and with him and in a shared fate that would bind them all. And in that hypnotic gaze of Melian and Thingol was born the fairest things in Arda that ever were, or would ever be.

Most of the Quendi chose to depart for Aman. Of those that did not, the Lost Ones and many of the Avari who ventured most unwisely near elements of the 'Fire-Queen' and her domain vanished and became remade into the monstrous Ljossalfar, the Eldalie, or the Eldar, as humanity knew them. The Sindar, both those of Doriath and of later kingdoms such as that of Thranduil, the Oberon of later years and later mythology, remained in the woods, and became warriors as doughty or doughtier as any of those with the light of Aman blessing them. One could not live in a Middle Earth afflicted by Varda's marring without gaining aptitude in the power and weaponry, nor without earning the right for later generations to gain the templates of gods, monsters, and storied heroes

The Quendi and the Khazad are the first children of the Earth to know language and speech and all that goes into what makes humanity the last to defy the gaze of the stars and the willful malice coded in them. Now that there are fossils and proof that these tales have been true and were all along so, in their wars and struggling against the legions of the Eldalie there is a warning for humanity today, and the reminder that the Ljossalfar were said not to have died but to have found a way beyond the walls of Earth, into the infinite blackness of space following the fall of the Hell-Queen.


	5. Of the Bliss of Valinor and the unchaining of Varda:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Three Ages of the Fathers of the Elves and the Dwarves and the Bliss of Aman, Ilmare lays the foundations of Angband, and the Unchaining of Varda.

_The irony mentioned in the histories of humanity that eras and periods of bliss get far less focus than those of misery and sorrow has its parallel in the only fully proven document of non-human origin. The eras mentioned where there were three Valarin ages of the Dawn of time, the equivalent of three hundred years in the time that exists now, are an age of glory for the Quendi and the Naugrim. The latter build all of their greatest realms, Nogrod, Belegost, and Khazad-Dum, the former are fruitful and multiply, and the Golden Age of the Sindar and the Empire of Doriath follows. The first appearances of the Ljossalfar and the ever-present menace of Ilmare do not diminish this. And yet, in the retrospect of the Darkening of Valinor, the creation of the Silmarilli that forms the next phase of the narrative of the Quenta Silmarillion, and the twisted family dynamics exacerbated by the cunning of Varda, so little is preserved. If nothing else, humanity can take comfort in how like us the Naugrim and Quendi actually are and were, and can again see in this a warning of what our own fate could become-_ Neil Gaiman, _The Red Book of Westmarch and the Wars of Arda._

For three of the ages of the fledgling Ea, Varda Elentari remained imprisoned in Mandos while the world turned, and the Noldor, Teleri, and Vanyar grew the greater within Aman, hallowing it and overspilling it with some of the Teleri returning to the east and a few of the more venturesome Noldor likewise. All the great cities of the realm that the Norse knew as Alfheim, the Hellenes as Elysium, Indigenous Australians as the Dreamtime, all arose during this era. Ingwe, also known as Freyr, became King of all the Elves, identified by his sigil of a Golden Boar, and by his manifold family. Where the house of Finwe knew misery from the prolific childbearing of Feanor and Nerdanel, Ingwe and his kindred multiplied in a way beyond the Noldor and the arts of the Vanyar, also known as the first of the Vanir, their memory preserved in a totemic fashion by the Vanir culture of the Hyborian age, and in the remnants the Church left of Germanic paganism in the Eddas, was in a full sense more tied to the Earth and to the Earth's fertility and harshness than the Noldor.

The Noldor were the greater in technology, and as far as can be reconstructed prior to the Darkening and the technological losses caused by the War of the Jewels, attained a level of technological superiority equivalent to or superior to anything human until the ferocious competition in space between the United States and the Soviet Union led robots to other worlds and humanity to land on the Moon, where as the imagery showed in another proof of the truth of the tales, Tilion, the Man of the Moon, greeted the first mortals to ever pay him a visit in his own domain. They had a creation superior to the Palantirs of famed Westernesse that is superior to anything the Internet and the smartphone of today allows, their medicine was far superior, and their metallurgy, too, was superior.

They grasped the military application of gunpowder and in a curious illustration of dissonance knew all the engineering of firearms (indeed, the well-equipped armies of Westernesse attained their power by use of lore from the Quendi brought by Tar-Elros, First King of Westernesse) but chose to develop instead a kind of repeating crossbow akin to that of the armies of the Chinese and eschewed gunpowder weaponry outside of artillery far superior to Westernesse or anything human until the era of the Second World War and after. Weaponry was a distant priority and mostly motivated by the fear induced by reminders that outside the wholesome light of the Trees, Varda herself may have been imprisoned but Ilmare Hell-Queen was not, and she and other monsters lurked in the Outer Light beyond the Trees and presided over the first elements that would go into the War of the Jewels, the Battles under the Stars occluded by the Noldor-focused narratives of the First Age.

Absent the edge of Aman, artillery, and crossbows, the bow and sword clad warriors of the Sindar, even those without the Girdle of Melian, fought the first stirrings of Ljossalfar, hordes that came in hundreds and then thousands, clad in bright shining armor and their souls and to a lesser degree their flesh twisted by the use of Star-flame within it. Their bodies were large than those of Elves, swollen and deformed, top-heavy and indeed they sloped forward somewhat in a more simian fashion. Their weapons were wicked things, clever and fiendishly so, and they were clad in great armor against lightly clad in cloth and tunic foes that had only the hand that wielded the steel at their disposal, And in ferocious and unsung battles save in the work of the Sindar and their bards, the hordes of the Ljossalfar that came on like shambling monsters and not yet the more experienced and brutal soldiers of the Wars of the Jewels met equally inexperienced Sindarin foes that learned war in a hard school and became masters of the art.

THE SHADOWLANDS/THE FUTURE NAN DUNGORTHEB: 

Ilmare had waited a long time for her mistress to leave Mandos. Before her imprisonment the stars had sung orders that in the starlight-pure gazes of the mountain fortress could be heard. Three hundred mortal years was not that long in the infinite lives of an Ainur, and she was plenty busy with the harvest of souls from the Avari and the entire population of the Westerners experimenting with her orders. Infuse starlight into the children of Illuvatar. All that was, was harmonics. Quendi more than most directly attuned to the primordial music. Change the melody, change the kind of life to something unrecognizable.

By comparison to the difficulties in translating the idea of the Ljossalfar from Varda's rantings in her fortress, transforming the Ents and Entwives captured into the mothers and fathers of the Jotnar, the creatures called Trolls and Giants in later lore, was ludicrously easy. It had given her steep illusions in the making of the new Eldalie. Quendi were stubborn and hardy, they did not yield easily. The few creatures, the stunted ones, with thick beards and their smaller and animalistic cousins, that she had captured did not fall, they became brittle and crumbled into ash rather than fall. But the Quendi were weaker. By degrees she'd experimented and had begun to hit on the combination that would become the Eldalie, the Eldar, the monstrous foot-soldiers of the later eras. Creatures that were cunning and brutal and brutally cunning, that ached for war and viewed torture as sport. Ideal soldiers, save that absent a firm hand they warred on themselves, potentially driving themselves into extinction in a half-millennium as mortals defined it.

That was a risk in her notes, but it was not something she considered that probable. Even if her mistress rotted in Mandos, she was free and discharging her duties, strengthening the elements of Angband, serving as Varda's lieutenant. Nothing that moved and owed loyalty to the rightful ruler of all Ea did so without her permission. Which was why when she felt something move from the Stars that blocked the starlight that did so in a way that was not connected to the Valar or the new Children, she sought immediately to investigate. There was always the prospect that Illuvatar might send reinforcements, unasked for, against her Mistress, who was mightiest and dangerous of his creations.

And now she was here. A valley, a realm of Unlight. This was new. New. That realization, that implication, that proof of her Mistress, the Star-Goddess's very words thrilled her. Something moved and chittered in the darkness, and It was no holy thing of Ea or of anything associated with it. The thrill that filled her caused her glow to intensify....and then a rumbling element moved and a thing the size of a Mumakil and somewhere between Spider, Goat, Ewe, and Ram skittered out on a largely Arachnoid form, and it spoke from its pedipalps in antisounds that echoed against a trembling reality:

_**Light.....bad. Go....away.** _

Ilmare grinned and 'complied,' musing that her Mistress would find this _very_ interesting indeed.

THE MAHANXANAR:

Three Eldarin ages passed and Mandos's doors opened. A being was brought before the gathered Noldor and Vanyar of Arda, who could not resist the chance to see and to witness one of the few open sessions of the Ring of Doom. Like the Valier, she was indisputably a feminine spirit, clad in what looked like rags, but her flesh was very, very dark. Darker than the darkest of the Teleri, whose skin was a rich brown. A blackness to match the stars. Her eyes gleamed with the terrible light forgotten to them under the light of the Trees, and they shuddered and clung to each other, and her cackle at seeing this made the braver stand up in determination and risk the balefire light.

Led with a surprising dignity, Varda strode with her legs unbound from the Aeginor which was doubled on her upper body, the muzzle removed, and brought to the Ring, where she was forced to kneel. Her rags displayed a very curvy body that gleamed with eldritch light, and there was no temptation there, only a recognition that in Mandos the robes she was forced to wear had rotted and she had made no effort to sustain the power in them.

 _ **Thou hast served the three ages of thy sentence. Dost thou beg pardon, or wilt thou be sent through the doors?** _It was Mairon again, and both Melkor and Manwe looked at her with a keen eye, while Nessa remained silent, knowing any word she said could become a means of a greater disaster. 

Varda closed her starlight eyes and willed her body to become akin to that of the Children, in a looser sense. She retained the Black that no rightful melanin could produce, and her eyes glowed with a bright light, while her hair gleamed with her starlight, but it was a gesture hot lost on the Valar.

She prostrated herself and spoke in slow, clear cadences:

_**O Lords of the realm of Ea, I beg for pardon. My deeds were driven by ill motives and misunderstandings of the deeper truths. I seek only to atone for the wrongs that I have done our Father, you, and the great realm here.** _

Melkor looked at her with skepticism, matched fully by Mairon, but both turned to Manwe, who was closest to the will of Illuvatar.

His own eyes closed, Sulimo entreated with his father, but such was the innate goodness in him that he opened his eyes and spoke calmly:

**It is the will of our Father that her pardon is accepted. Pass thy judgment upon her atonement, Brother.**

Melkor's gaze was hard and Varda's was as hard, as he told her in words of leaden import to rival that of Mandos, tapping into that share of his brother's gift:

_**The least of all the servants of the Blessed Realm shalt thou be, and in thy humility and the works of thy hands shalt thou show thy ways have become more than she we called from the depths of Eldano. Such is the will of the Great King of Arda.** _

With as much sincerity as she could muster, Varda prostrated herself.

_**Such has it ever been, so ever shall it be.** _

The chain was removed from her, and with a blink of the eyes her garments were restored, though they were a midnight blue with streaks and whorls that seemed to represent starlight.

In that moment in time, with that writ of the Valar, a chime of Vaire's meant to herald the end of the Blessed years began to chime as Varda strode off with the dignity of an affronted cat and the Elves turned to stare at her with a pull that awed them and meant that she very swiftly became seen with awe, reverence, fear, and hatred all at once.

DORIATH, NURSERY OF LUTHIEN TINUVIEL:

After three hundred years of muted droning that was 'merely' a thing heard in the soul, the stars began to sing again in Arda, low and rhyming songs of hate and death, blood and fire and red slaughter. The doors of Doriath were shut to those who could not pass through or be accepted by Melian's Girdle, or who were not meant to be there from the will of the Doomsayer, who could override Melian as few others could. It did not help that to the east and the south there was that realm of growing darkness where some horrid creature of Varda's hells had taken roost and begun to weave darkness. Then again what it wove concealed the starlight as well as Melian's girdle, so that raised a more horrid prospect:

Had some dreadful beast of the Void taken residence next to her realm?

Not sure which was worse, the singing and thirst of the starlight or the monster next door, Melian and her husband went to the crib of their newborn baby daughter, Luthien Tinuviel, and vowed that no great wrong would or could ever overtake her. Even the Star-Queen herself could not ovecome her, and would never be allowed to do it.


End file.
